Video Games

I had one. I'd forgotten all about it. I recall the football game was pretty good, but not much more. I think I may have learned to play poker with it, but I'm not sure. It might have been on the Intelevision a few years later.

Mine had a membrane keyboard we never used. No games needed it.

If Trump where half as smart as he thinks he is, he'd be twice as smart as he really is.

Summer Games! I used to kill countless hours in the computer lab playing this. Between the javelin throw and the pole vault, I was set for life. It is just about the only thing I remember from all those days in 4th grade =)

I had summer games on my Commodore 64. Loved it.I had some great records.Then my friend next door borrowed it, his younger brother had nothing better to do but spend All day on the game and broke all my records :-(

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own - Grateful Dead "Eyes of the World"

I've currently been killing my time playing Digital Combat Simulator (DCS World). Having experienced everything from Atari 2600 on, it blows my mind the capabilities of today.

DCS, believe it or not, is "free" to play. I say "free" with quotations as you can d/l the entire game with one starter plane, an Su-25T Frogfoot, and fly sorties completely without charge.

Should you desire, you can then purchase additional modules which allow you to fly a number of different aircraft. The list is pretty stout, and new craft are being added all the time. If you like the WWII era prop jobs, you can dogfight in a P-51 Mustang, a Messerschmitt Bf 109 K-4 Kurfürst, or a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 D-9 Dora. If old jets are more up your alley, you can choose from a MiG-15bis, MiG-21bis, or an F-86F Sabre. Do you like BVR air combat? Try an Su-27, Su-33, MiG-29A, MiG-29S, or the daddy of air superiority, the F-15C Eagle. What, you like rotary birds? How about an Mi-8MTV2 Magnificent Eight, a UH-1H Huey, or a Ka-50 Black Shark? They're all in there. And, what I've been killing countless hours (and armored vehicles) with, my favorite warplane of all time, the A-10C Warthog.

Calling it a "game" is liable to raise the hackles of many simulation pilots. Because it's not just a game, man ;) It's the closest you can get to flying combat sorties without actually joining the armed forces. The manual for the A-10C alone is six hundred and fifty pages long. Yes, 650. Why, you may ask? Well... because you actually have to fly the plane.

Every single thing is modeled in this sim, and I mean everything. Weather, wind, damage, weapons systems, flight systems, NAV systems... every button in the cockpit is clickable and has a function. From battery power to spinning up the APU, from programming the flight plan to programming weapon's profiles, from engaging countermeasure to engaging emergency systems, it's all there in the cockpit and you have to do it all.

You begin in a dead and empty plane, typically inside a hanger. You call the Ground Crew and command them to fill your tanks and ordinance, which you choose from a menu. Chaff and flares are a given, as is a full drum of rounds for the GAU/8 cannon. But then what? Well, every single thing the armed forces uses, you can use, too. Got a bunch of soldiers in a tent city? Some M151 anti-personnel rockets are in order. Need to take out some harder targets? Strap on some Mk-82 bombs. Whoops, those hard targets are guarded by Shilkas, better use the laser guided GBU-12's so you can drop from height. Tanks on the move toward your base? Grab some AGM-65 Mavericks. If it's at night, make sure you use the D version, as the IR capabilities make them stick out like a sore thumb. Each weapon has every single variant. The Mk line of bombs includes both the 82 (500lb) and 84 (2,000lb) version. Each of these offers the dumb version, the laser guided version, even the JDAM version. Every AGM-65 variant is there, from 150lb to 300lb, from electro-optical to IR. Rockets span from anti personnel to anti tank to smoke to illumination, for when the sun sets and the choppers need help identifying targets. They even have the inert training version of all these, so you can practice over and over at the range without destroying the target. It's intense =)

So yeah, fill it up with fuel and weapons, and then you actually have to get moving. The A-10C has a 41 step start up program. The first 15-20 minutes of play time is just turning the thing on and getting all the systems warmed up and programmed. Call the tower for permission for start up, taxi, and take off, and the tower answers back, confirming permission and telling you which runways to use and what number you are for take off. Yes, I said number, because you can have 50 or 60 other pilots playing along with you, all engaged in simulated war as they vie to capture territory, establish air superiority, and take out each others' army / airport / infrastructure. All of this in real time with real people. Man, it is cool stuff =D

Then comes the actual flying and fighting, and talk about escapism. So much happens at once, you have to be at full attention at all times. Your teammates on a CAP are calling out commands and enemy fighter location. You're flying at 20' off the treetops in a mountain valley to avoid both air and ground radar. Your buddies in the faster Sabres have already attacked and scattered the tanks, making the info you had at takeoff less than reliable. A guy in the P-51 is frantically calling for help as he can't get close enough to the advancing line without getting tore up by Shilkas. At the same time, the guy in the Ka-50 is screaming for illumination as he can't pick out targets hiding in a city in the dark. And as you come out of the mountain valley, your RWR bellows and you're greeted by a wall of tracer rounds. You hear them zip by. You hear them pepper your fuselage. Then there's a big bang and your whole cockpit lights up in warning lights.

DCS has a wicked damage model, including cascading damage. Parts don't just fail because of taking a round, but will fail if support systems become damaged. Blow out an oil pump and the engine will continue to run. Keep running it, though, and it will falter. Pound on it some more and it will catch fire. Panels get blown off, ailerons get blown off, sometimes whole systems just fail. I was on a sortie last night and ran into a bee's nest of AAA. Before I could escape, I took a full blast and it was a disaster. I lost all NAV, lost the HUD, lost both MFD's. The tip of my left wing was gone, my left tail was gone, and the left engine was on fire. Oh noes! I had to jettison all stores, head down in cockpit to shut down the left engine and engage the fire suppression, trim out the plane so I had some control, and manually spam all chaff to give me a chance of escaping. I managed to get out alive and under control, but then what? Fortunately the A-10 is robust (any other frame would've been insta-eject), but having to land with no hydraulics, little control, and a tore up landing gear is a whole 'nuther feat to accomplish. I managed to set her down with wheels only on the right gear, quickly ripping the left and front all to hell and finishing in a belly landing. Got her shut down and out of it without dying, and a half hour later I had a new plane, was fully loaded, and headed back into the skies.

Ah, tis true. And I totally know what you mean by Microsoft FS, as I've played that before. Now imagine MSFS, only with all sorts of weapons and their systems on top of it ;) It's a huge time sink, and quite a steep learning curve. I mean, a 650pg manual? Even games with a lot of button input, like sports or fighting, are 6-10 pages. But 650... come the revolution, I should be able to fly an actual A-10 ;)

I am very un-social. Sure, I do the hockey / racing / fishing thing, but that's pretty much the only time I am with people. I never go to the bar or a friends house to watch the game, or throw or have parties, or... I dunno, what do people do with each other nowadays? Whatever it is, I don't do it.

And you can only read so much, and write so much, and TV is mostly bleh. So I play. Summer sees a big drop in game time, as then there is a yard to tend and house to maintain. But our winters result in a lot of indoor time. Winter is gaming season.

On the A-10 itself, I can't say anything. Not because I don't want to, but because I'll go on such a derailing tear I'll ruin my own thread ;) With so much chatter about commercial craft, I was thinking of making a military craft thread. I love all that stuff, and the A-10 is king of that hill.

P.S. Those last hardpoints can only carry a jammer or the AIM-9. I want the jammer, yet I obviously only need one. So if I put it on, those 100kg way at the wingtip cause an imbalance. So I throw an AIM-9 on the other side as counterweight. Forget bogeys; I'm too loaded with A/G to engage aircraft, preferring instead to jam, chaff, and run. It's really just a very expensive counterweight... unless, of course, a silly helicopter happens into my area ;)

Ah, tis true. And I totally know what you mean by Microsoft FS, as I've played that before.

I ran it couple of time son an Apple ][e (really!) But a friend played it incessantly, starting on an Atari 800 (really!) and steadily moving on to ever more capable PCs.

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Now imagine MSFS, only with all sorts of weapons and their systems on top of it ;) It's a huge time sink, and quite a steep learning curve. I mean, a 650pg manual? Even games with a lot of button input, like sports or fighting, are 6-10 pages. But 650... come the revolution, I should be able to fly an actual A-10 ;)

I had an A-10 game for an early PC (DOS, really!). While not a realistic simulation, altitude was affected by speed, and speed got affected by maneuver. it drove me crazy! How am I supposed to shoot at the targets and watch out for enemy fighters, if I have to keep track of speed, trim, flight instruments and such?

I can see it would be enjoyable to really fly the plane, but I wouldn't call it a game anymore. More like a hobby.

If Trump where half as smart as he thinks he is, he'd be twice as smart as he really is.

I play a lot of games that would like boardgames or card games if they weren't on a computer. Sometimes, it's games where the complexity is such that tracking it without a computer would be tedious.

Sometimes, it's form of card game where the fact you can create or change cards on a whim in a computer adds to the combination of effects. For example 'War of Omens' is a simple enough 'Magic-like' game, but some of the cards can create extra cards for your deck.

I also play a few war-sims (Unity of Command is my current favourite) or empire builders (Civilization). Though I love Civ, I find the scenarios far more engaging than the 'small tribe to space faring race' game.

It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die.... it's called Life

Ok, so I knew there was a new version of Elite out. It is a bit of a MMO-something. Kinda pricy too. But as I was checking it out, they have, for free, a download of a BBC Micro Emulator and the 1984 version of Elite.

I'm looking forward to trying it out.

I spent countless hours on Microsoft's (and SubLogic, and before that various) Flight Simulator. I was even a part of a few Virtual Airlines. Yes, there is no shooting things. The first virtual airline I was invoved with had a very thorough training program, written by a guy who made a career of being a flight instructor.

I also played Summer Games/ Winter Games for the c64.

Another couple of C64 games I spent a lot of time with were Bard's Tale and Ultima III. I also had Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was a Zork-like game, and that was a hoot.

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." Daniel Patrick Moynihan